from the storm
by F8WUZL8
Summary: Yuuko is gone, and Watanuki needs saving.  Enter Doumeki, from the storm.


**I wrote this on a whim, in order to practice my imagery and to do some anti!shipping. I hope you like it :) **

...

Doumeki steps into the shop, one foot and then the other, leaving behind his wet shoes and his practical black umbrella. He can only hear the wind and rain rushing sideways outside, scraping against the stucco and struggling past the ornate adornments on the roof of the building that never was and always is. His eyes shift from side to side, he analyzes the shadows playing off of the decorations in the wallpaper. The butterflies are stagnant, and as stale as the air.

He hesitates in front of the paper sliding doors. A chill runs down his spine. Where are the assistants? His fingers reach out to the dark wood, glancing over the surface. There are no notches in it, no ridges. These doors are as unnaturally perfect as the rest of this building. He slides one to the side and steps in.

The lights aren't on, and, even though it is early in the afternoon, the dark clouds in the sky block any natural light. The carpet is the same shade as the walls. Here are the assistants, the two girls and the animal, limbs interlaced and merging as one. Even the three of them are too small for the dull red futon. They aren't sleeping, they are unconscious.

He wanders, drifting through rooms and hallways in some sort of direction. He doesn't know where he is going; he is led by a vague feeling, a half-remembered dream. He isn't afraid of the lifelessness in the shop, but he is struggling to keep moving. It is like a supernatural weight on his shoulders, a want to collapse against the wall and lay there, to die. No one will try to wake him; no one will know, not here, not in a shop that doesn't exist. But if a heart fails with no one around to witness, will it truly die?

He doesn't stop, and, because of this, he does, having reached his destination. Sort of. The air in the storeroom is clean because all of the dust has long since settled. Watanuki is in the middle of the floor, not unconscious but not conscious, laid out on top of a silk kimono. His arms are folded on top of his chest as if he is laying in a coffin, and his empty eyes gaze at the ceiling. There is blood on the floor near his head, blood on his school uniform, and blood matted in his hair.

"She's gone." he whispers. He is broken. His voice is hoarse from screaming. The wounds to his head were self-inflicted.

Doumeki lowers himself next to him, moves Watanuki's arms from the dead man's pose and slips a hand between his shoulders and the ground. He lifts Watanuki's limp, deathly pale form, enveloped in the red kimono, and Watanuki's face buries into Doumeki's shirt.

"You're not." Doumeki says firmly.

He carries Watanuki back through the lifeless shop, through the dark hallways and past the still, curtained doorways. The girls are just waking, groggily, as if from death, and the animal has, by some miracle, turned on the stove and begun to boil water. Doumeki hears a clock ticking, the girls mumbling, the water running, the lights flickering on, and Watanuki groaning as he is laid down on the futon, blanketed in silk. The sounds from inside the shop begin to overcome the storm raging outside, and it becomes much easier to tell the carpet from the walls.

"We must make the master tea!" the girls sing, "We must make the master tea!"

Doumeki kneels in front of the couch near Watanuki, his own fingers moving of their own accord into Watanuki's hair, to feel for the cuts; the blemishes that separate Watanuki from the unnatural perfection of the shop. He doesn't feel any. The blood has disappeared. Doumeki's fingers slide down to Watanuki's jaw, the perfection in his skin, of his face in rest.

Watanuki's eyes open, "I love her."

Doumeki can hear the girls singing, "The master loves Yuuko!" The animal announces that the tea has been made. Part of Doumeki is being pulled apart as he lets go of Watanuki and looks at the carpet.

Watanuki is suddenly as unnaturally perfect as the rest of the shop, and Watanuki's eyes are infinitely more perceptive. His body is no longer lifeless; he sits up, and a delicate finger curls under Doumeki's chin and lifts Doumeki's face so that Watanuki can make eye contact.

"I'm sorry." Watanuki says.

"You've changed."

"I'm sorry." Watanuki repeats, patiently.

"But-"

"The tea is done!" The girls bring over a small table Doumeki has never seen before, and place on it a tray with a pot of tea and two teacups. Their eyes and smiles are warm and welcoming.

"Will you stay, Doumeki? Here?" Watanuki asks, wrapping the red kimono around himself and lifting a teacup to his mouth, lounging on the futon as if he was meant to be there... here, now. Always. Doumeki can no longer hear the rain.

Doumeki looks up at Watanuki's knowing smile. He thinks about how Watanuki is now part of the shop, part of the living dead. He thinks about the storm outside.

"Yes."

Doumeki doesn't see those shoes again.

...

**In my opinion, Doumeki was, beyond all doubt, in love with Watanuki. But I think that omniscient!Watanuki wasn't in _love _with Doumeki, as much as cared about him like one cares about a trusted servant...**

**I mean they might have sex once in awhile but not in the conventional "when two people love each other _very much..."_ sense. **

**I don't know.**

**Drop a review, please :)**


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